Thomas Ruff
| Thomas Ruff | |
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Thomas Ruff
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| Born | 10 February 1958 Zell am Harmersbach, West Germany |
| Nationality | German |
| Education | Kunstakademie Düsseldorf |
| Known for | Photography |
| Movement | Düsseldorf School of Photography |
Thomas Ruff (born 10 February 1958) is a German photographer who lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. He shares a studio on Düsseldorf's Hansaallee, with other German photographers Laurenz Berges, Andreas Gursky and Axel Hütte. The studio, a former municipal electricity station, was converted between 1998 and 2000 by architects Herzog & de Meuron, of Tate Modern fame, and updated with a basement gallery in 2011.
Thomas Ruff, one of six children, was born in 1958 in Zell am Harmersbach in the Black Forest, Germany. In the summer of 1974, Ruff acquired his first camera and after attending an evening class in the basic techniques of photography he started to experiment, taking shots similar to those he had seen in many amateur photography magazines.
During his studies in Düsseldorf and inspired by the lectures of Benjamin HD Buchloh, Ruff developed his method of conceptual serial photography. Ruff began photographing landscapes, but while he was still a student he transitioned to the interiors of German living quarters, with typical features of the 1950s to 1970s. This was followed by similar views of buildings and portraits of friends and acquaintances from the Düsseldorf art and music scene, initially in small formats.
Ruff studied photography from 1977 to 1985 with Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf Art Academy), where fellow students included the photographers Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Thomas Struth, Angelika Wengler, and Petra Wunderlich. In 1982, he spent six months at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. In 1993, he was a scholar at Villa Massimo in Rome.
Commenting on his influences, Ruff said, "My teacher Bernd Becher, showed us photographs by Stephen Shore, Joel Meyerowitz and the new American colour photographers." He is often compared with other members of a prominent generation of European photographers that includes Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky and Rineke Dijkstra. From 2000 to 2005, Ruff taught Photography at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
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